Redfin admits mistake, Trulia and Google score listings

Redfin admits that it screwed up, saying that one transaction was inaccurate which caused the company’s “negotiating advantage” to drop from .904 percent to .893 percent. That means its negotiating advantage dropped by $54, from $4,474 to $4,420. Total savings for those who used the service now stands at $14,080.

Chief Executive Glenn Kelman writes in a blog post:

“After a week of intense scrutiny, the basic conclusion that Redfin’s King County customers got a price significantly better than customers of other brokerages still stands, but we are exhausted from having to re-analyze an already exhausting analysis, and apologetic to everyone we let down by making this mistake.”

In other online real estate news, Realogy Corp. — whose brands include Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and others — said it will make more than 500,000 real estate listings available to Google and Trulia.

Realogy is calling it one of the largest distributions of “property listings to major online search engines at one time.” This is a significant deal and could put pressure on Zillow.com, which as of today had a little more than 49,000 home listed for sale on the Web site. Could we see the heavily-funded Seattle startup try to strike deals like this one with big real estate firms? Or, as I have pointed out before, will the large brokerages remain suspicious of Zillow?